Turbotir.com - a serious trading business or a criminal scam?

Turbotir.com - Some offers sound too good to be true, and once you read them alarm bells should be ringing. They may be – or have a very strong logical argument behind them – to be a total scam. I recently stumbled over a post that was promoting turbotir.com and I am really wondering – are they real, a total scam or just not smart enough to actually know what they are writing?

Always be careful when people promise risk free trading

The original post that made me go to turbotir.com was made on my plus.google.com stream in the forex community. It was promoting this website with a nice and slow and quite amazing argument:
We do not promise you a huge interest, but we will get you a stable income. Our automated trading system is configured in such a way that to detect a minimum of least 700 points price movement in one direction, which does not allow to lose your investment. Our robots are as accurate as possible to avoid unexpected errors, thanks to automatic intelligence.

There is a ton of arguments in this little post that just scream not serious. It starts with not promising a “hugh interest” – but "stable income". In trading. Turbotir.com – making the impossible possible? Then it goes on to say that their robots at least catch 700 points, which is a brutally large movement (and bears the question how you catch them if they do not happen – 700 POINTS in the USDEUR is a change of 7 USD – maybe they mean pips?) and goes on arguing this makes it impossible to lose the investment (total bullshit – a drawdown with too little risk management can kill the investment, and that is totally unrelated to average profit). Obviously the robots – driven by “automatic intelligence” are “as accurate as possible to avoid unexpected errors”. That is a nice claim – for someone too ignorant to know anything about programming and actually believing it. Any programmer will realize that all this says is they are as good as they could make it, and likely tested to whatever standard they have, so any error now is a bug and expected.

This is a very bold marketing claim – and one that lets me really go to the website. And the website is... interesting. Starting with the lack of any sensible risk explanation. Nothing more than a simple “never risk what you cannot afford to lose”, not enough by any standard we are aware of – not when hidden on the side in small section that must be manually selected or be seen at the correct time (among other rotating text).

The anatomy of a scam? Turbotir.com is a site that makes bold claims. The about us section is seriously claiming “Trade & Investment Robot LTD is one of the leading technology developers of automated trading on international exchanges since February, 2012.” That is nice. And a bold claim. One of the leading by what list? Everyone seems to be leading these days. By their own standards. I have not seen their name in the CME as a member (which is one of the international exchanges). So, what is behind? Google.com does not really give sensible information about Turbotir.com.

There is a lot more crap on their website. For example this:

100% have no analogues (show us the exact same system and we will pay
you $100,000).

Seriously? Trading systems are a very complex set of programs. Finding two that are 100% identical is impossible, even if only a minor item is different. This is a totally useless claim, exaggerated by a 100.000 USD pay out promise that the authors of the great one page website know they will never have to fulfil.

Turbotir.com is offering two trading robots running on their trading floor (seriously? A trading floor to run robots?). Let me quote:

When investing in TIR Standart v1.6 on the trading floor of TIR LTD,
the investor has the opportunity to generate income from investments > - from 1% to 2% per 24 hours.

When investing in TIR Turbo v3.0 on the trading floor of TIR LTD,
the investor has the opportunity to generate income from investments
- from 1.6% to 3% per 24 hours.

Sounds good? Thinks again. Logically. This is a CHANCE – not a promise. Lottery offers a chance of a multi-million dollar pay-out. A worthless promise unless it’s quantified. As long as the results they claim are achievable in a single day of their back tests – the result is possible. The chance is slim, but it is possible. A useless number. You do not quantify a strategy by the best day it may have had. And this is all information that is provided about past performance. Nothing else.

But it gets better. A lot better. Something that makes me think this may just be thieves running a Ponzi scheme.

Due to the fact that the number of traders around the world is
constantly growing, the company developed the TIR LTD 2-tier
affiliate program. For the recommendation to use the services of
TIR, the investor receives 60% from the 1st and 40% from the 2nd
level of the profit from the transaction chosen by the partners. For
example, if you are a guest of the first level partner receives $
100 from the deal, and the partner is the second level of $ 200, you
get $60, and $80 for an affiliate program respectively.

Bear with me – I have problems understanding this. Now, starting with the claim of the number of traders being ever growing (yes, as we all know the exchanges print money for people without skill), this effectively turns the whole program into a MLM scheme – Multi Level Marketing. If I understand it right, for 200 USD in profit, there are 140 USD distributed via the affiliate program? Profits of up to 3% per day (ridiculously high), but then we add affiliate pay-outs. We now reach nearly 4.5% profits per day. Why the heck do people look for investors with this type of income? Simple answers – because the numbers are fake.

But hey, they claim “Security of funds”, without any qualification (as usual) right there on their website.

This high pay out not only is unlikely – it also puts a lot of incentive on every customer to bring in new customers. MLM and money – the chance of a Ponzi scheme are great. What would this mean? It would mean that Turbotir.com pays out existing investors with new money. Money is never really traded, it all is a nice pyramid game. You pay to Turbotir.com - Turbotir.com uses that money to pay out those investors wanting their money back. This is called a Ponzi Scheme.

Legal check. What about calling Turbotir.com?

You must be joking. The 47 phone prefix is Norway, the address in France and the website only available in English and… Russian? The only other reference at the bottom is “Software protection provides ESTEQ company (Ukraine)”. Ugly for a company asking for investors. This is pretty much all the information you can get about this operation. The certificate of registration, provided as a picture, is in Belize. A wonderful international company, with products “recognized in more than 23 countries” (whatever this means), which neither names a CEO nor has more than an obviously fake address. No email, no pictures of staff, only a phone number that... that only accepts SMS messages. Trustworthy.

What about their website of Turbotir.com?

That has more information. And not compatible one, too. Something most people will never even know how to retrieve. The WHOIS record. The official owner is…

How are they supposed to make money? Nothing on their website indicates where their – fair share – is. Which likely means – it is not fair.

At the end, they are a perfect example of a non serious operation – either run by criminals, or by people so clueless about the basics of any business operation I wonder how they manage to turn on their computer. I bet on criminals. And I bet one day we will read about it in the news, when a lot people (not doing any due diligence) lost their money to them.